6. The Case for Equality / John Rawls

Kant never wrote a book on political philosophy, so he doesn't have a worked-out theory of justice. But what is clear from his writings is two things:

1. A just society isn't one that aims to maximize happiness. A just society aims to "harmonize each individual's freedom with that of everyone else".

2. Political authority, and related concepts of "rights" and "justice", are derived from a hypothetical SOCIAL CONTRACT that all rational persons would agree to.

There are lots of different approaches to justice and morality based on the idea of a social contract. Social contracts play important roles in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, for instance, two figures whose views had a big impact on Thomas Jefferson and the writing of the US Constitution.

A distinctively Kantian approach to social contract theory was developed by John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice, published in 1971. It's one of the most widely cited and discussed books of political philosophy of the 20th century. Why so popular? Well, because it provided an original defense for a position we can call "welfare liberalism", which says that the state has obligations to provide for the basic needs of its citizens (minimum wage, health care, education, etc.) by taking some money from the rich (through taxation, say) and redistributing it to the poor.

This issue has always been very topical in American politics. Obama's reelection was largely about this issue, with him defending greater tax increases for the wealthy, and Romney opposing it. Welfare liberalism is largely taken for granted in Canada and Europe, but not so in the United States, where the Republican and libertarian right-wing associates it with the evils of socialism..

John Rawls is famous for providing the first really persuasive argument for welfare liberalism. And he did it by using a Kantian-inspired form of social contract reasoning.

Here's an article published following his death in 2002.

1. Here's the one-line version of Rawls's theory:

The principles of justice are those that would be agreed to by any rational, self-interested person deliberating from the "original position", behind the "veil of ignorance".

If we can unpack what Rawls means by the "original position" and the "veil of ignorance", then we'll have a good handle on Rawls.

Question: What is this "original position" (is it an actual, historical event?) and what is the "veil of ignorance" (what sorts of knowledge are we supposed to be ignorant of when deliberating from this position)?

2. Rawls thinks that in this position, if we could vote on a set of principles for organizing society, we wouldn't choose a set of utilitarian principles aimed at maximizing overall happiness. Why not?

3. In the middle section of this chapter Sandel digresses from Rawls and spends several pages talking about the moral limits of consensual contracts. This is potentially confusing, since it takes a while to make it clear why this is relevant to understanding Rawls. So let me help to explain the relevance.

Sandel argues, through a variety of examples and case studies, that consent is neither a sufficient nor even a necessary condition to ground a moral obligation. His discussion is interesting. He shows how important it is to distinguish obligations based on consent and obligations based on having received some benefit, and how a lot of debates over contracts confuse the two.

Why is Sandel talking about all of this here? Because he wants to make a point about the morality of contracts and how contracts derive their moral force, and use this to defend the Kantian idea that a hypothetical or idealized contract -- a contract that no person actually signs or agrees to -- could nevertheless have some moral force, be a genuine source of moral obligation.

The upshot of this discussion is that contracts derive their moral moral from two values -- autonomy (through voluntary and equal consent) and reciprocity (I owe you something because you did something of benefit for me, and vice versa). But in real-world situations, most actual contracts fall short of these ideals. In real-world bargaining contexts, some people usually have more power or knowledge than others. This can render the contracts unfair, because they don't live up to the ideals of autonomy and reciprocity in the original bargaining position.

This is the value of talking about a hypothetical negotiating situation, where all parties are guaranteed to have equal power and knowledge. "A contract like this, among parties like these, would leave no room for coercion or deception or other unfair advantages. Its terms would be just, whatever they were, by virtue of their agreement alone."

As Sandel says, "If you can imagine a contract like that, you have arrived at Rawls' idea of hypothetical agreement in an initial situation of equality".

And that's the point of this potentially confusing digression in the middle of the chapter, to help motivate Rawls' framework and the idea that conclusions drawn from this framework might actually have some moral force behind them.

3. Rawls argues that two principles of justice would emerge from the original position of equality, behind the veil of ignorance.

The first is sometimes called the "Principle of Equality". What is this principle?

The second is sometimes called the "Difference Principle". What is this principle?

4. One of the central arguments for Rawls' egalitarian approach to justice is the argument from "moral arbitrariness". The central idea is that the distribution of goods and wealth in a society should be "fair", and whatever else that may entail, what would be unfair is if goods and wealth were distributed based on "morally arbitrary" factors, factors that are outside of anyone's control but that nevertheless privilege some over others.

A classic example of a morally arbitrary factor would be something like eye color. It would be unfair if people with blue eyes were given greater freedoms and opportunities than people with non-blue eyes, right? Because eye color is morally arbitrary, there's nothing significant about eye color that could make it morally relevant to issues of fairness or justice.

Give three other examples of morally arbitrary factors that in our culture, benefit some people and disadvantage others.

5. A deep principle of libertarian approaches to justice is that we all "own" the fruits of our labor and talents, no one else has a claim on them. Rawls strongly disagrees with this. He believes that Michael Jordan doesn't "deserve" the benefits of his own amazing athletic talents. (If you want to bring the example up to date, think of Michael Phelps.) Or more accurately, he believes that Jordan (or Phelps) doesn't have a special or privileged claim on the benefits of their own talents and accomplishments.

This sort of thing drives libertarians crazy, and it's very counter-intuitive if you randomly poll people on the question.

(a) WHY does Rawls say this?

(b) Nevertheless, Rawls does believe it can be fair for Jordan (or Phelps) to earn more than others from their accomplishments, maybe even a LOT more. How does he justify this, if he doesn't believe that Jordon (or Phelps) "deserve" these greater benefits?

[NOTE: If you can get the answer to this question, you know all you really need to know about John Rawls and his theory of justice.]